


Requiem for Despair

by Nenalata



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Coping, Domestic Fluff, Dreams and Nightmares, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Loving and Loving and Love and LOVE YOUR SPOUSE, Married Couple, Politics, Post-Blue Lions Route (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Spoilers for Marianne's paralogue, lots of comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-25
Updated: 2020-02-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:40:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22889365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nenalata/pseuds/Nenalata
Summary: Marianne has no patience for filling her new home of Faerghus with awful fears and false ideals. Now that she’sQueenMarianne, it’s doubly true. She can and does effect change, ensuring curses and despair can’t wriggle their way through this country’s too-many cracks.Daytime may not allow space for curses, but nightmares have more power in their favorite dark somnolence. And both Dimitri and Marianne have nightmares aplenty.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Marianne von Edmund
Comments: 25
Kudos: 174





	Requiem for Despair

**Author's Note:**

  * For [coolbreezemage](https://archiveofourown.org/users/coolbreezemage/gifts).



> Behold, dragonsigma commissioned me for a fascinating DimiMari prompt! I hope I did the sweetness and the hurt/comfort justice in your eyes. Writing this made me feel my decision pre-commish to get a DimiMari ending this run seem all the more justified, and I had a really just...soothing time thinking about their dynamic. Thank you so much for letting me write it. I very much hope all of you find it pays off, too!
> 
> Come find my incomprehensible self on twitter. I'm [@NenalataWrites!](https://twitter.com/NenalataWrites)

Faerghus after the war has no space for curses.

Its war-ravaged farms open their fields to crops. Its razed towns fill with rebuilding villagers. Its coffers dwindle and replenish. Too many pieces of the broken puzzle that this country has become still lie scattered, in need of replacing. Each one has a place, a purpose, a reason for living.

Marianne has no patience for filling her new home with awful fears and false ideals. Now that she’s Queen Marianne, it’s doubly true. She can and does effect change, ensuring curses and despair can’t wriggle their way through this country’s too-many cracks.

The gossips, however, don’t see Queen Marianne. They see a woman from a fallen nation controlling theirs. They tell the world they see a cursed Crest who transforms into a beast at night, wandering the chilled forests outside Fhirdiad, devouring hapless travelers. Some speak such vitriol for the sheer joy of mockery. Some speak in superstition.

While most days she can carry her head high, wade through the pits of politics with influential vipers snapping at her heels, the confidence Marianne gained so many years ago from breaking her curse can still falter.

“I am King,” Dimitri tries to reassure her when he finds her fighting tears in chapel. “You need not suffer these fools, not alone.” And while Marianne knows his words to be true, Dimitri is King to his— _their_ country first, and her partner in life second. As day comes before night, Faerghus comes before Marianne.

When night does come, however, Queen Marianne doesn’t turn into a wandering beast.

She turns back into Marianne. And King Dimitri back into Dimitri.

“It feels as though we only speak under candlelight,” Dimitri sighs one evening.

Their first private conversation of the day, and they’re already getting in nightclothes. Marianne crawls under the covers as soon as she can. The northern-based capital is no exception to Faerghus’s cold. Dimitri, immune, takes his time undressing and redressing. He hasn’t ever tried to hide himself from her; their very first night together, he’d confessed being self-conscious about his eye, but she was and is the last person he ever wants to hide any part of himself from.

Maybe other partners would have found such a gesture dramatic at worst, sugary-sweet at best. Marianne had simply appreciated it and had said so.

“If worlds were easy to create,” Marianne replies now, “it wouldn’t have required a Goddess to create ours.”

Dimitri only offers her a wry smile and joins her in bed. She hopes they both sleep easy tonight. A war-torn world to put back together contains a great many people; it doesn’t consist of the nobility and the nobility alone. And the actions the nobility take affect every single person under their wings.

Today, Marianne had been charged with rearranging trade routes to a struggling town bordering Fraldarius. The local baron had imposed high taxes on imported food, but the next chickpea harvest was delayed by frost. After the town had paid the baron’s monthly crop portion, they’d been left with barely enough of the harvest to eat on their own; certainly not for expensive imported food. Marianne, remembering a similar situation in Edmund from her youth, elected to redirect one trade route from Gautier through Fraldarius to Fhirdiad, using that town as one of its hubs. Its new, closer proximity will presumably lower the taxes.

She doesn’t know if she’s made the right choice. ‘Right choices’ are so rare, whether wartime or peacetime, but they haunt her all the same.

Marianne falls asleep seconds after Dimitri ghosts a kiss along her brow.

Daytime may not allow space for curses, but nightmares have more power in their favorite dark somnolence.

_The people of the village cannot afford the butcher’s exorbitant chickpea prices. “Maybe we can compromise,” Marianne suggested. It seemed like a good idea to her, but the butcher, who is Ingrid, strongly disagreed._

_“How can I compromise when my people are dying?” the butcher who looked like Ingrid shouted, waving wild hands behind her at the crumbling farmhouses. Soldiers patrolled the rows of wheat, scowling through the reaped bundles and kicking at the rest. “I need to make a living, too!”_

In the morning, Marianne doesn’t find herself very well-rested.

“I look how I did in school,” she announces to her dressing table mirror. Dimitri hums an inquiring sound. She prods the soft, shadowed skin under her eyes; Dimitri looks in the mirror, too. “Did I really look like a ghost back then?”

She expects Dimitri to chuckle, but he doesn’t. Just stares at her reflection with love and sadness in the lines of his face. “You look nothing like a ghost. And you’re beautiful.”

Marianne starts her day with a pink face and violet shadows beneath her eyes. She finds she doesn’t mind too much, though she’s pleased about the former. It wasn’t a bad dream, per se; more anxious than haunting.

Dimitri’s bad dreams, however, don’t limit themselves to the night. Dimitri’s nightmares can grip him whenever.

“Is that acceptable to you, Your Majesty?”

Dimitri nods at the courtier, who nods at the scribe, who nods over his paperwork and jots something down. Marianne, from her own throne next to Dimitri’s, can see his precise handwriting.

“For the next order of business,” the courtier continues, “we must send an undertaker and a white mage. Baron Dominic has sent soldiers to deal with the bandits, but the affected families include that of their local healer, so there’s no one to attend to the victims’ last rights.”

Beside her, Dimitri freezes. Marianne peeks at him out of the corner of her eye, trying not to draw attention.

His already-pale face has gone deathly white. His eye shines, glassy and unseeing.

The oblivious courtier carries on. “I’ve taken the liberty to assemble lists of candidates.” Marianne hopes he’ll read them on his own, but of course he won’t; in the former Leicester Alliance, even minor lords demanded particular respect. The courtier does indeed clear his throat. “Which list would Their Majesties like to hear first?”

Dimitri doesn’t reply. He doesn’t even blink. Marianne can’t tell what part of this discussion has invited an unwelcome shadow in his vision, nor can she tell who it is this time. His stepmother, Glenn, one of his many, _too_ many victims—

Marianne won’t guess. She speaks up instead. “How many lists do you have? Two?”

The courtier beams, pleased to have his hard work acknowledged. “Indeed, Your Majesty. One of local undertakers, one of local white mages. However, some of the mages are still assisting other towns; they’re merely stationed nearby.”

Dimitri nods. Twitches, really, but it’s movement. Marianne relaxes. “List the mages who aren’t occupied first,” Dimitri orders. It’s a far cry from his usual engaged self; spoken softer than his already-soft-spoken voice. But he’s prepared and trained and educated himself for this role as King his entire life. He can reach for it on his own when he needs. When he can.

The courtier nods back, _not_ twitchy, then at the scribe, who nods over his paperwork again. Court continues.

Marianne, too, has prepared for this role. Not as Queen, certainly, and only for half her life. But she has training and education to fall back on, too, when decisions must be made with confidence no matter how much of it she lacks; when the consequences of those decisions must fall on her shoulders no matter how ready she is to bear them. She holds up well during the day. Queen Marianne must rise above the people, competent and confident, responsible and ready.

Night falls. Marianne, Dimitri can be people once more.

“Thank you for today,” Dimitri tells her, the first words from his lips the second they shoo the servants away.

Marianne smiles. He helps unhook her necklace, and the warm touch of his callused fingers on her shoulders feels like home. “You don’t need to thank me,” she tells him honestly.

“But I do. I…you didn’t let me retreat.” Her jewelry jingles in his palm, then again when he drops it in a drawer. It’s the wrong drawer—that’s her earring drawer—but Marianne likes how proud he looks. _I see it_ , his expressions says: _I see_ _how you’ve made this place yours_.

“Retreat?” Marianne furrows her brows, but she remembers half a breath before red-faced Dimitri can elaborate upon his embarrassment. “Ah, in court! No,” she hurries to assure him, placing her hand in his, “you came back all on your own. I only…”

Dimitri ducks his head, and she trails off despite his tiny smile. “You bought me time, to put it bluntly,” he admits. “You gave me an easy sentence, an easy choice to give him. One that required little thought.”

Marianne, who was ready to kiss his concern away, now laughs at the last sentence. “I’m not so sure he should hear you say that.”

“Oh, for—” Dimitri’s red cheeks turn crimson now. He withdraws his hand from hers, but only to cover his face. “It was an important decision! I don’t mean to make light of—you’re teasing me,” he sighs, too long-suffering to be taken seriously. Marianne’s laugh slides into a pleased smile.

Dimitri kisses the tease from her mouth.

_A mage in white armor helped the bandit into a carriage driven by wyverns. Marianne was Queen now, which made her an outlier in the Golden Deer. Hilda helped her put on makeup for her coronation. She was gorgeous, the cutest little bride. The dream has no words._

Dimitri doesn’t look particularly well-rested in the morning. “I couldn’t fall asleep,” he confesses when she asks. “Yesterday was…difficult.”

Marianne nods. They almost alternate nights with their ghosts and their dreams. “I wish you’d woken me,” she says, but Dimitri shakes his head with a bashful little smile quirking his lips.

“You looked peaceful. I loved it; it calmed me eventually, seeing you like that.”

The day is uneventful, save a letter and official gift from the baron thanking Her Majesty the Queen for the privilege of establishing the town in his territory as a trading hub.

Marianne becomes human very quickly that night. Dimitri less so.

“I’m sorry we didn’t see much of each other today,” he says the moment they’re alone.

Marianne raises her brows. “Why? You were busy.”

He sighs. A gloomy darkness spreads over his face. “Sometimes I wonder how the people feel to be ruled by someone who…who has done what—”

“Dimitri,” Marianne says firmly, and he shakes himself out of it.

“Yes. Forgive me.” Another sigh. “I don’t need comfort. Thank you.”

Marianne finds that a rather odd statement. “You don’t need to be brave in front of me,” she reminds him. “But you shouldn’t linger on such thoughts. They—” she doesn’t elaborate on who _they_ are, “—say such things of me, too.”

Dimitri’s glare is a fearsome thing, and while his outrage is unnecessary, Marianne loves him for it. “And they’re wrong.”

Marianne nods. “They’re wrong about you, too. Come to bed.”

They do.

The nightmare does, too.

_“Truly, you make for a good wife,” Dimitri sneered. “No one could love a monster save a monster, isn’t that so?”_

_“You’re not a monster,” Marianne said._

_Dimitri laughed hard enough to make the forest shake. “Perhaps I’m not. Perhaps I wasn’t until I met you!”_

_Marianne tried to back away, but the fog propelled her forward. Closer to his truth and cruelty. “It’s just my Crest,” she tried to explain, desperation coloring the edges of her voice. “It’s not_ me _, it’s just my Crest. It’s affecting you, too.”_

 _Dimitri shrugged, slung Areadhbar over his shoulders, stared her down with one glaring eye. “You and your Crest are one and the same, then,” he scoffed. “Don’t misunderstand me. If I were to drain Maurice’s blood from your veins, Marianne, all that would be left would be a monster with no strength. Worse than him, that_ beast _. Powerless, weak. Pathetic.”_

_“You’re wrong!”_

_He was right._

_Dimitri disappeared into the fog, the only company left for her the echo of his gleeful laughter._

“Marianne?”

Dimitri’s sleep-addled voice caresses her ears as she cringes away from him under the covers. Sweat rolls down her spine, drenching the messy strands of her hair, scalp to neck.

“No, no, no—”

“Marianne!” Dimitri awakens more, reaching for her even as she curls into herself. “Marianne, it was just a dream. Breathe, love.”

Marianne breathes.

“Breathe out, too.” She does. The amusement in his voice is so forced it almost hurts to hear. “Again. And out. Do you want me to hold you?”

“No,” she says quickly. Dimitri’s arms retreat. “Yes. I mean yes. I…” Dimitri seems hesitant to hold her anyway, like he’s uncertain she’ll change her mind. “I…I mean it. Please.” She inches closer, but…but…Goddess, it’s a sign, it really is, he _won’t_ want to hold her, he really does think she’s a monster—

Dimitri’s arms wrap tight around her and pull her against his chest. She can hear his heart pound, wild and true and human.

“I had a dream,” she explains.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Marianne hesitates for only a moment. “Yes. I had a dream about you.” She feels more than hears his sharp intake of breath. “That you said I was a monster. That you didn’t…” She squeezes her eyes shut, rebelling against the sting of hot tears.

“Of course I love you.”

Marianne sobs, and Dimitri begins stroking her back while he talks. His voice is roughened by sleep. He’s real.

“You’ve never been a monster. Your soul is as human as your blood bleeds red. You’re Marianne, the woman I love. The woman I _love_ , with all her burdens and pain and joys and…and things you say and do no one would know make me blush. What kind of monster could do any of that? Particularly that last one.”

Dimitri’s own teases are always so solemn, even spoken with a smile. Marianne’s laugh is more gasp than giggle, but she feels him relax around her anyway.

“I don’t know if this is remotely comforting you,” he confesses when her shudders calm.

She shakes her head, wiping her tears on his chest in the process. “You’re the only one who ever can.”

Dimitri presses his lips to her brow. The kiss is in the shape of his smile. “Well. I suppose a monster can’t comfort anyone, least of all a woman it loves. That is good to hear.”

Marianne falls asleep again, this time in Dimitri’s arms.

_“Truly, you make for a good wife,” Dimitri sneered. “No one could love a monster save a monster, isn’t that so?”_

_“You’re not a monster,” Marianne said._

_Dimitri laughed hard enough to make the forest shake. But she didn’t let him reply with those hating, self-hating words._

_“You do too much good for your country to be a monster,” she said firmly. “You work too hard to right wrongs, even ones you wrought yourself. Even though plenty around us wait to watch you fail. What sort of monster loves others that way?” Dimitri stared her down with one glaring eye. But even Dimitri in a dream, for this_ was _a dream, deserved kindness and comfort. “What sort of monster would_ love _? And you love me. I love you, Dimitri.”_

_Dimitri disappeared into the fog._

When Marianne awakens, Dimitri is nowhere to be found. She slips on her robe and cracks open the door to his private office, and sure enough, he’s hunched over his desk, squinting at a report. Glowing sunrise lights up his smile when she enters his good eye’s line of sight.

“We handled the bandit situation well,” is all he says. Marianne cups his face in her hands, brings him close, and seals her happiness in his mouth.

Their home never will have room for nightmares.


End file.
